Category: Q and A

What is fashion licensing?

Here’s an excerpt of an interview I did for Fashionarium’s ‘Secret Weapons’ Series. Check it out.
Brandon Graham – Menswear Designer & Illustrator

PinkyShears’ publisher, Brandon Graham, interviews fashion illustrator, Jennifer Lilya at her studio in Brooklyn, New York.

Have a look and give some feedback on Jennifer’s illustrations here on http://wouldyourockthis.com/vote/current/31/

I thought you might be interested in what a Fashion Colorist does. As a designer I’m used to checking and approving color test/lab dips myself, but the interviewee, who would rather stay annonymous does this exclusively for her assigned designers. I asked her 15 distinct questions to help you understand this position. It seems like a position people “just fall into.” They don’t teach this specifically in school, but you may be assisted by one when you begin your new job… if your lucky.

A simple thing like changing a dress form can save a lot of money. We changed our form to the Alvanon form recently. They’d been working with old Wolf forms. The problem with old Wolf forms is they are just not made like a human, and when you start to use those forms as a base, your garments are bigger and too boxy to reflect how people are.

Find Out What Segment of the Garment Industry is Still Going Strong.  Meet Steve Steinberg of QST Industries, leading supplier of innovative men’s, women’s and children’s apparel construction components.  Part 2
BG: How do you handle companies changing their designs during the entire process?
SS: We get called in after a company does all the initial [...]

Find Out What Segment of the Garment Industry is Still Going Strong.  Meet Steve Steinberg of QST Industries, leading supplier of innovative men’s, women’s and children’s apparel construction components.  Part 1
The many facets it takes to create a garment are not made within one company; the devil is in the details. No one understands this [...]

A marker is the paper layout for cutting pattern pieces. Cavazza sees making markers as building puzzles, “where you’re not sure what the finished product is going to look like.” He has loved building and solving puzzles since he was a kid, a quality he sees as essential for someone who [...]

Brandon Graham: How do the details a tech designer tracks affect the bottom line and consumption?

Nina Banks: Because we’re working with production and sales as well as the designers, we’re going to see a big picture of how any design change you want to make will impact the costs, and the consumption of fabric, [...]

Production is the mother of the business. Sales controls the business: they’re the father. They say “they’re doing this in the industry and we want to be closer to this, what do we need to do to get there?” They look at numbers critically, and see how they can make it better, and ask the technical designer how to make the changes. Sales, being the father knows where the family needs to go, how to make a better “kid,” the garment, so to speak.

Stella Ishii was well aware of the disconcerting maze young designers must navigate when she established The News. The muti-label showroom sits in the heart of SoHo, but its web of clients stretches internationally North, East, West and South. A major part of bringing the company into being was when Ishii tapped her talented [...]

Another designer who Morimoto beamed about was Japanese brand Sacai. Morimoto flipped through The News’ published mock newspaper from this season, looking for examples of Sacai’s work. The May issue of Essence magazine also sat on the coffee table in front of us and she pointed to first lady Michelle Obama.

AM: Actually Michelle Obama wore [...]